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The term 'Edge Computing' refers to computing that pushes intelligence, data processing, analytics, and communication capabilities down to where the data originates, that is, at network gateways or directly at endpoints. The aim is to reduce latency, ensure highly efficient networks and operations, as well as service delivery and an improved user experience. By extending computing closer to the data source, edge computing enables latency-sensitive computing, offers greater business agility through better control and faster insights, lowers operating expenses, and results in more efficient network bandwidth support.

There have been 3 major computing revolutions in industrial applications—mainframe, client server, and cloud computing. Taking up where these paradigms left off, edge computing is establishing itself as a foundational technology for industrial enterprises with its shorter latencies, robust security, responsive data collection, and lower costs. It is extremely relevant in the current hyper-connected industrial environment, as its solution-agnostic nature enables its use across a range of applications, including autonomous assets, remote asset monitoring, data extraction from stranded assets, autonomous robotics, autonomous vehicles, smart factories, oilfield operations management, machine monitoring and smart campuses.

The multi-access edge computing (MEC) market is still at nascent stage, with telecom operators and cloud providers conducting trials and, in certain cases, agreements to launch commercial offerings. The recent launch of 5G technology with much lower latency and higher capacity, coupled with MEC, brings computing power closer to customers, driving new applications and experiences. Operators are now deploying smaller data centers in the network edge, closer to customers, optimizing applications performance. However, telecom operators cannot implement and manage MEC alone. They must establish partnerships and an application ecosystem to seize this growth opportunity. Thus, operators are partnering with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud to improve the performance of existing mission-critical applications, and enable new applications over wireless networks.